


one good reason

by QLaLa



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Breakfast, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 17:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11926092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QLaLa/pseuds/QLaLa
Summary: “Someone had to protect Central,” Len said. “And since the Flash wasn’t going to do it...”Barry raised an eyebrow at that.“And making me pancakes is your idea of protecting Central?” he asked.





	one good reason

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the prompt "Just admit I'm right."
> 
> Will I ever stop defaulting to hurt/comfort fics with these two... probably not. Many thanks to my beta, Elizabeth!

Saying it had been a long day wouldn't have just been an understatement; it would’ve been factually incorrect. Barry had been awake for nearly forty hours by the time he skidded through the doors of the Central City Stock Exchange, doing his best to look formidable despite the obvious wear and tear to his suit.

The Rogues, scattered at computers across the trading floor, largely ignored him. Hartley did glance up from where he was wiring his gloves into some kind of mainframe, but he only offered Barry a friendly wave before getting back to work.

A blast of cold came from behind Barry, off to the side of the doors, and struck the ground just to the right of his boots. While obviously a warning shot, Barry still had to skitter sideways a few feet to avoid being iced to the marble floor. The speed force came when he reached for it, but only with great effort, and he knew Snart wouldn't miss the split-second delay in his response time.  

He wheeled on Snart. A cramp was beginning to stitch in his side, and he forced himself not to press a hand to it. Despite the furred hood and tinted goggles, Barry could clearly make out the amusement in Snart’s expression, and he scowled back.

“Can this wait?” he demanded. He sounded—well, he sounded _cranky_ , but he was past the point of caring.

Snart swept the cold gun out in a lazy arcing gesture.

“What, the hero of Central City, not in the mood to play?” Snart asked.

“Yeah, no,” Barry said testily. He made a gesture of his own towards the state of his suit, but he was fairly certain Snart just took it as an invitation to give him a lingering once-over behind his goggles. “A pack of phase-shifting metas have been terrorizing downtown Central for two days. Maybe you heard something on the news?”

Len looked unconcerned. He held the cold gun level at him again, but didn't fire.

“Well, you know what they say,” he drawled. “When the cat’s away...”

Barry felt a stab of impatience. To make things worse, his stomach growled, loud enough that he wouldn't have been surprised if Snart could hear it from where he stood. On cue, Caitlin’s voice crackled to life in his com.

“Barry, your blood sugar is dangerously low,” she said.

It was perhaps the sixth time in the last hour that she’d told him as much, and the concern in her voice had long since given way to annoyance. Barry couldn't really blame her.

“Yeah dude,” Cisco chimed in. “Wally and I can take the Rogues in a minute, get your hypermetabolic ass back to STAR Labs.”

“I’m handling it,” Barry said. “Keep on those metas. We can’t let them breach midtown.”

Snart was watching him from across the room, head tilted and radiating irritation at Barry’s obviously divided attention.

“Don't let me keep you,” he said.

Barry didn't bother to check his eye roll.

“Give it up, Snart,” he said. “You and I both know how this ends.”

He sounded exhausted, even to his own ears, so it was no surprise that Snart didn't look very intimidated. Instead, he smirked, and it was the only warning Barry got before Snart fired the cold gun again.

Barry skirted the blast with another laborious burst of speed. Lisa was a few feet further along down his path, so he let his momentum carry him past her, swiping her gun as he went. She hadn't even drawn it from the holster, and Barry felt another spike of annoyance at how unconcerned the Rogues were with his presence. It was clear that they knew reinforcements weren’t coming, and that Barry had already taken a few hits from the metas downtown.

Barry almost pulled Lisa along with him as a bargaining chip, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. For one, he wasn't sure he could manage the extra weight in this state. For another, Snart—Leonard, anyway; they were both Snarts—wouldn't have taken the threat seriously. It was an unfortunate side effect of Barry having almost gotten himself killed saving Lisa from their father the year before.

Instead, Barry let her alone, and threw her a scowl as he disassembled a few key components of the gun. Lisa gave him an exaggerated frown where she was still leaning against the console next to Hartley.

“Now that was just rude,” she said, in a pouting simper that was about as genuine as her brother’s drawl. “Cisco’s a hard guy to get repairs from these days.”

She didn't exactly name-drop Vibe, but she didn't need to. Cisco had taken far fewer precautions with his secret identity than Barry had, content with his glasses and his faith that his powers would give him advance warning of most ambushes. The Rogues were happy to indulge the disguise, though, as Cisco was the only one who could fix their tech when Hartley was nursing a grudge.

“Did someone say my name?” Cisco said over the coms, a little too casually.

“Cisco, not now,” Barry said, and Lisa’s expression brightened.

“Is that him?” she asked, all pretense of the aloof seductress dropped in an instant.

“Oh, is Lisa there?” Cisco asked, clearly feigning surprise. “Tell her—”

Barry was saved from having to rip his own coms out by a concussive blast from the front doors of the building. The force of it sent him flying, and for one bewildering moment, he thought it was something Len had done with the cold gun. Then he landed, registered Lisa pulling herself into a sitting position next to him, and corrected himself. Len never would've pulled anything that would put her or the other Rogues in such needless danger.

As if to confirm this, the sweeping whine of the cold gun joined the ringing in Barry's ears, and the bright flash of it drew his attention to the doors. His stomach dropped when he saw one of the metas from downtown shift easily out of the way of the icy blast.

“Mick!” Len snarled, half-turning to shout over his shoulder as he fired another blast.

Mick Rory rushed out of a back room, heat gun at the ready, but something he read in Len’s sharp glance made him change tracks. He rounded on the Rogues instead.

“This is above our pay grade,” Mick said. “Piper, leave that. ‘Boo, get us out of here!”

The last was apparently aimed at Shawna Baez, codename Peek-a-Boo, who blinked abruptly into existence in front of Barry. An unspoken “Lisa first” protocol was evident in the peevish expression on Lisa’s face as Shawna hauled her off the floor, but the two of them disappeared without incident a moment later.

Barry didn't wait to watch Shawna spirit the rest of the Rogues outside. Just getting to his feet was a Herculean effort, sluggish limbs in full revolt, but he clawed for the speed force again and threw himself across the room.

Stopping was harder—something Barry had long since stopped noticing, relying as he usually did on muscle memory. He was reminded now, though, as he nearly overshot Len completely. Black spots erupted at the edge of his vision as he tried to arrest his momentum, and he barely managed to stay upright when he staggered to a halt between Len and the meta.

“Go,” Barry said. “She's here for me, go!”

The blast of icy air over his shoulder as Len took another shot at the meta was answer enough. Her silhouette dissolved, dissipated into nothingness for a second, then reappeared a dozen feet to their left. He and Len spun in tandem to face her, Len already charging the cold gun again. The sound was enough to make the meta hang back, and Barry wondered if the last shot had hit her after all. It gave him an idea; if Len could get her head-on, the cold from the gun might stabilize her molecules and force her to—

Shawna appeared between them, disrupting his train of thought. He expected her to grab Len and go, but to his surprise, she caught him by the torn elbow of the Flash suit instead.

“Boss?” she asked, flashing Len a questioning look as Barry tried feebly to shake her off.

“No,” Barry said. “Seriously, Shawna, get out, take Snart and—”

“Go!” Len barked at her, his eyes never wavering from the meta in front of them. Shawna glanced at them each again, indecisive, then blinked away.

Barry shot Len a disbelieving look, torn between thanking him and demanding that he leave. He didn't get the chance to decide; Len glanced over to meet his gaze, just for a moment, and the meta lunged.

*          *          *

The first thing Barry became aware of was an odd trace of sweetness on the back of his teeth. He tried to place the flavor as he pushed up onto one arm, his elbow sinking into whatever soft surface he was lying on. It didn't make sense, but he could've sworn it was—

Ah. He rediscovered how to open his eyes, and found a glass of orange juice just a few inches from his nose. It was sitting precariously close to the edge of a battered wooden trunk that Barry had never seen in his life, and which seemed to be serving as a coffee table.

He would've liked to pretend to weigh his options, but his stomach had flown past hunger and gone straight to pain, so he picked up the glass and downed the juice in a few swallows. He considered afterwards that there were more than a few risks involved in chugging a random drink in a house he didn't recognize and couldn't remember getting to, but he figured those problems were secondary to being too woozy with hunger to even try using his powers.

The sugar from the juice helped him focus a bit, but he was distracted from his scan of the room (small and neat, eclectically furnished) by the smell of pancakes.

He set the glass down on the table but misjudged the force, and winced at the resulting clunk. The quiet in the apartment seemed to sharpen, as if it had just become a conscious silence, then a pan clattered rather pointedly from the direction of what must have been the kitchen.

“Mind the table, Barry,” a familiar voice called. “It’s an antique.”

Barry sat up sharply, though he was badly hampered by the bright spots that danced across his vision and the way the room tilted dangerously when he did so.

“Did you seriously kidnap me?” he asked, though it came out more like a resigned statement than an actual question.

Another clatter from the kitchen, and another silence. This one felt pricklier than the last.

It wasn’t, now that he considered it, a very stereotypical set-up for a kidnapping. He wasn’t cuffed to anything, though he was missing the Flash suit. Was missing most of his clothes, actually; he was wearing only a pair of someone else’s sweatpants, soft with age and a size too big, so that they threatened to slide off his hips even with the drawstring tied in a precise knot. There was a blanket on the back of the couch, but Len hadn’t bothered to cover him with it.

The thought passed through his mind, then he doubled back for it. The Flash suit. That had been what he'd been wearing last, hadn't it? He remembered brief snatches of the day before—endless hours of fighting the phase-shifting metas; splitting off from the team to deal with a Rogues situation uptown; fighting, exhausted, with Len at his back when one of the metas tracked him there. After that, basically nothing. A shout of his name, maybe, and the vague memory of pain.

And now he was in a strange apartment with Leonard Snart, with no sign of either his suit or his cell phone. If Len had stashed the suit here, Barry could find it; give him a minute, and he could turn the whole place upside down. That was the first thing he'd do, he resolved. Well, the first thing he’d do, after—

“Is there food?” Barry called.

He swung his legs off the couch, and regretted it when the room spun around him again. He screwed his eyes shut and waited for it to pass, then gingerly moved to stand. The room stayed mostly stable as he picked his way over to the window and pushed aside the curtains. It looked to be just before dawn, but Barry was less concerned for the time than he was in scanning the skyline for any obvious signs of damage. Last he remembered, the city had been full of blaring sirens and pillars of smoke as the metas had torn through downtown. Now, though, everything seemed quiet.

“Can you at least tell me what happened with the metas?” he asked, following the sounds towards the kitchen, which he found just off the main hall.

Len was at the stove with his back to him, but Barry only spared a quick glance to make sure he was unarmed before sinking on weak legs into a chair at the small dining table.

“Depends,” Len replied. “You actually gonna remember this time?”

Len picked up a plate from the counter, and crossed the short distance to slide it onto the table in front of him. Barry could’ve wept at the sight of the pancakes, and he barely managed to remind himself to wait for a fork. Len handed him one from a drawer a moment later, then a napkin, and a glint of metal caught Barry’s eye as Len pulled his hand away.

For one bizarre moment, Barry thought it was a wedding band; then his mind registered that it was a pinky ring, and he felt, strangely, a sense of relief. He didn’t have time to analyze the emotion, though, because that was also the moment he noticed the bare skin of Len’s wrist. His gaze was pulled there out of sheer surprise. He’d never seen Len in anything but long sleeves, either his ridiculous-looking parka or his other, unfairly not-ridiculous-looking leather jackets. But Len wasn’t wearing a jacket now, only a soft, clinging white shirt, the sleeves of which were pushed up to his elbows, and a dark pair of jeans slung low on his hips.

Barry was distantly aware that he was staring, fork held uselessly in the air. But he was having trouble getting enough of his brain online to deal with the lean strength of Len’s forearms, the warm tone of his skin against the stark white shirt, and the faded ink of a tattoo half-visible on his inner elbow.

The room felt much warmer than it had a moment ago, and Barry pulled his gaze up hastily before he could begin to blush. He met Len’s eyes just as Len was dragging his gaze up from his bare shoulders, and the change of subject died on Barry’s lips. The tension in the room pulled taut between them; Barry was acutely aware of his own breathing, of the visible rise and fall of his chest as a clocked ticked somewhere in the next room. He licked his lips self-consciously, and, for the briefest moment, Len’s gaze dropped down to track the movement. Barry felt an answering interest spark in his stomach, and he was sure that Len had to have heard the slight unsteadiness in his next breath.

Then the oil popped loudly on the stove, and Len turned away sharply to lower the heat under the pan. Slightly dazed, Barry gave himself a moment to admire the strong line of Len’s back through the threadbare shirt. That was—if not new, exactly, then definitely _different_. That same knife’s edge of attraction between them, but stripped now of the pretense of a fight, which left them… somewhere. Somewhere alone, and quiet, and with neither of their disguises anywhere in sight.

And, with Barry still teetering on the edge of passing out. He pulled his attention back to the food in front of him, needing significantly more of his higher functions back before he dealt with anything more complicated than just staying conscious.

After a few pancakes, Barry’s headache began to recede a bit, and he realized Len was saying something about yesterday’s heist. He waited for a break in the monologue, focusing blearily on the elegant flex of Len’s wrist as he checked a pancake and, unsatisfied, left it to rest again. He hadn’t been listening, but he surmised from what he did hear that Len had left behind a sizeable haul to get him to safety, and that the honorable thing to do would be for Barry to go back and get it for him. When a break finally came, Barry pounced.

“Is there coffee?” he asked hopefully.

When Len looked at him, it was with a rather cool expression, and Barry suspected that he’d interrupted him after all. Still, Len didn’t look particularly menacing while barefoot and holding a spatula instead of his cold gun. He had flour on one elbow, and some more near the hem of his shirt where he must’ve leaned against the counter.

“Didn’t either of your fathers teach you any manners?” Len asked.

“They tried,” Barry said. “So is that a no on the coffee, or...?”

Len gave him another unimpressed look, but passed him a mug and the carafe anyway. Barry poured himself a cup and took a grateful sip.

“The metas,” he started again. “Is my team okay?”

Len inclined his head, and, after a moment, turned around to look at him again. He leaned back on the counter, arms crossed, clearly evaluating how lucid he actually was. Barry, feeling significantly better since clearing the first plate, quirked an eyebrow. This was apparently enough for Len, who nodded again.

“A little worse for wear,” he said. “But still standing. Not unlike our dear Central.”

“A little worse—Is someone hurt?” Barry asked.

“Cisco took a bad hit,” Len said, and Barry was halfway to his feet before the blood rush forced him down in the chair again. Len rolled his eyes. “And like I _said_ , he’s fine. They all are.”

“Snart,” Barry pressed, and Len gave him an even look.

“If you pass out, we have to do this all over again in two hours,” he said.

He took Barry’s empty plate and swapped it for another pancake-laden dish. When Barry grudgingly pulled it towards himself, Len leaned against the counter again.

“Cisco took a hit, but Shawna got him out of there before your metas could follow through,” Len said. Barry looked up, startled, and Len gave him a warning look. When Barry stayed sitting this time, though, he grudgingly continued. “Rathaway got the metas paralyzed after that, something with frequencies.”

Barry suspected that Len knew exactly what Hartley had done, and was deliberately withholding the information. He let it slide, though, wanting the rest of the story before he pushed Len for more information on that detail.

”Mardon and Wally took them down from there,” Len said, and waved his hand vaguely. “Pulled off some real fancy footwork with a hail storm. The media loved it.”

Barry stared at him, mouth slightly agape, earlier decision not to interrupt already forgotten.

“What did you just say?” he asked.

“Enemy of my enemy, and so on,” Len said. “Couldn’t be avoided. The Rogues didn’t like those metas smashing up Central any more than your—”

“No,” Barry interrupted. “What you just said. About Mardon.”

Understanding clicked in Len’s expression, but he schooled it and raised an eyebrow instead.

“Joe West’s son comes out of a coma, the Flash appears,” Len said. “Joe West’s _other_ son moves to Central, Kid Flash appears. It’s not a hard leap to make, Barry.” Then he tipped his head, something like genuine amusement pulling up at the corner of his mouth. “Course, a little scarlet birdy was happy to confirm it for me a few hours ago.”

Barry felt an unpleasant suspicion rising in his chest, and he put down his fork.

“Is that why I’m here?” he asked. “I’m, what, concussed? You wake me up every few hours and prod me for information about my allies that I won’t remember giving you?”

Len stared at him coolly. Barry hadn’t recognized the amiable spark that had been in Len’s eyes until it went out.

“There’s nothing wrong with your memory, Barry,” Len said, voice sharp and unfriendly. “Your blood sugar is just low. Which, I might add, is an improvement over a few hours ago, when you were also dehydrated, sleep deprived, and down a few pints of blood. But please. Don’t thank me for saving you.”

Barry felt the first creep of shame at the accusation he’d just flung, but lashed out defensively before he could stop himself.

“Why didn’t you take me to STAR Labs?” he demanded.

Len’s demeanor changed abruptly again at this question. He glanced away from Barry, a muscle ticking in his jaw, and uncrossed his arms to brace his hands on the counter behind him instead. Barry got the distinct impression that if Len had been wearing his parka, he would’ve shoved his hands in its pockets.

“You didn’t want to go."

Barry blinked at this, thrown. “I didn’t want to go?” he repeated. His mouth pulled up in a humorless grin that dimmed when Len continued staring at the far wall. He wasn’t lying. “Why not?”

“Search me,” Len snapped. Then he took a sharp breath, and an inch of the fight went out of his shoulders. “Couldn’t get a clear answer outta you,” he continued, a little more evenly now. “But you were adamant. Anywhere but STAR Labs.”

“I was disoriented,” Barry argued. But it was with a sinking feeling that he realized, in a hazy corner of his mind, that this was beginning to sound familiar.

“You grabbed the steering wheel,” Len said, and the suddenness with which he dropped his affected drawl left Barry slightly off-balance.

Some details were beginning to come back, now that Len had raised the subject. Barry remembered heat and blinding pain, then being held in a rough fireman’s carry as he floated in and out of consciousness. The fur trim of Len’s hood had tickled his chest where his suit was torn away, giving him something to concentrate on as he tried to stay awake.

It hadn’t worked; the next thing that came back to him were the street lights cutting through the darkness of the car as they’d hurtled through the evacuated streets of downtown Central, Len going well over the speed limit and taking frequent sharp turns down back alleys.

He’d grabbed for Len’s arm, leaving bloody streaks on the sleeve of the parka, and Len’s expression had been tight with alarm when he’d looked over at him from the driver’s seat. Barry remembered now, remembered begging Len to take him somewhere safe. Len’s eyes had flashed over the wrecked chest of Barry’s suit, and his voice had been sharp with anger when he’d said, “We’re going to STAR Labs.”

And Barry remembered all too well the surge of panic he’d felt at that. His mind had raced with too-fast flashes of waking up in the med bay, of metas snarling in the pipeline, of Eddie bleeding out on the floor of the accelerator, of the weeks of slow recovery after Zoom had snapped his spine.

He’d grabbed Len’s sleeve again and croaked, “No.” Len had taken another sharp turn—pain exploding along Barry’s ribs as he’d tried to stay upright—and then glanced over at him again, distracted, and Barry had met his gaze desperately and said, “Somewhere safe.”

Len’s odd behavior this morning, the care with which he’d been picking his words, suddenly made sense. Barry hadn't just been adamant; he'd been terrified.

Len was watching him carefully now from across the kitchen. His expression was wary, but the earlier anger was gone.

“Why here?” Barry asked, because he needed to say _something_ , and “sorry,” and “thank you” both seemed too loaded.

Len held his gaze for another moment, then turned back to the stove with a one-shouldered shrug.

“Considered knocking on Joe’s door,” Len conceded. “Decided against it. What with me being an escaped felon, and you being...” Len left off the point, shrugged again. “Didn't like my odds.”

Barry looked down at his plate, an uneasy mixture of guilt and embarrassment prickling at the back of his neck.

“Can I have my suit?” he asked after a few moments. “I need to check in with my team.”

He had other questions, namely how Len had gotten him out of it, and why he hadn't deigned to give him a shirt once he did, but this seemed the safest track.

Even so, he’d expected an argument, but Len only set down the spatula and ducked into the hall. When he reappeared a few moments later, it was with a garbage bag in one hand. The inside was streaked rather gruesomely with old blood, and Barry’s heart sank.

“No wonder I didn’t want to go back to STAR Labs,” he joked weakly as Len dropped the bag on the floor next to him. “Cisco’s gonna kill me.”

“He’s welcome to scrape the rest out of my car’s upholstery,” Len said, with no real venom. Then he looked at Barry, head cocked, hawk-like.  “Thought it couldn’t melt.”

“It shouldn’t have been able to,” Barry said. He poked the bag morosely with his foot, feeling irrationally betrayed by the remains of his mangled suit. Cisco had backups, but they’d have to test them all against whatever the meta had hit him with to see if this was a fluke or a genuine weak spot in the tri-polymer.

His thoughts caught on that, and it jogged loose some recollection of explaining the composition of the suit to Len the night before.

Barry winced at the phantom pain of the memory as it came back to him. He’d nearly blacked out more than once as Len had ripped free long shreds of the suit that had melted against his skin. Len’s jaw had been set, and his hands had moved with deft, impersonal precision, despite the blood on his fingers and the way he had flinched at every one of Barry’s bitten-off cries of pain. There were only a few snatches of detail: the sharp smell of antiseptic; the pinkish water in the bowl of towels on the edge of the sink; the warmth of a washcloth pressed hard against the sluggishly healing skin of his chest as he’d murmured an apology for bleeding on the tile.

It was hard to reconcile the Len of that memory with the one standing in front of him now, arms crossed and expression shuttered.

This, at least, answered the question of why Len hadn’t given him a shirt. Burns as bad as the ones he’d had the night before would’ve needed a constant supply of fresh bandages, and Barry wondered for the first time if Len had gotten any sleep at all since the botched heist.

Barry was still trying to swallow his pride enough to thank him when Len sat down at the table with the rest of the pancakes, a cup of coffee, and an honest-to-god print newspaper. He left the platter of food in the middle of the table, and unfolded the paper with a practiced flick of his wrist.

“You actually pay for a newspaper subscription?” Barry asked, unable to keep the surprise out of his tone.

Len didn’t bother looking up.

“No,” he said. “But the hedge fund manager across the hall does.”

The corner of Barry’s lips quirked up helplessly at that, and he felt some of the tension bleed out of the room at the predictability of it. He went back to his food for a couple minutes, but glanced up again when Len made no move to make himself a plate.

“You should eat,” Barry said, which was entirely different from the _“Aren’t you going to eat?”_ he’d planned on saying.

“Not much of a breakfast person,” Len said.

Barry blinked, and looked over the spread. He wanted to say something, but was distracted when Len reached up and unhooked a pair of thin, gold-framed reading glasses from the collar of his shirt. Barry hadn’t noticed them before now, and he lost the thread of his thoughts when Len slipped them over his nose and turned a page. After a few seconds of slack-jawed silence, Len glanced up at him over the rim of the glasses, and Barry dropped his gaze.

He only lasted a moment before looking up again furtively. The glasses suited Len, accentuating a certain roguishness in his features that Barry hadn’t thought could be emphasized any more. He let his eyes wander to the line of Len’s shoulders, more relaxed now, and then down to the sliver of tattoo on his inner elbow. He followed the scarred skin of Len’s forearm down to his hands, and remembered the feeling of one resting between his bare shoulders the night before, supporting him easily as Len had tried to get him to sit upright on the edge of the tub and pressed a glass into his hands.  

When Barry realized he was looking for traces of his own blood under Len’s nails, he pulled his attention back to his food.

After another plate (he refilled from the platter in the middle of the table, after looking to Len for permission and being summarily ignored, because god forbid they have a polite conversation) Barry was beginning to feel up to running again. He could feel his body switching back into high gear, speed force humming under his skin once more. With the earlier haziness gone, he took the chance to shuffle his priorities back into order. First and foremost, he needed to see his team. There was really no justifying staying any longer, even if he was finding himself disinclined to leave.

It was just beginning to lighten outside, though, and the apartment was hushed and still, tempting him to stay just a little longer. He watched Len sip his coffee, trying to analyze the tentative peace that had settled over them. Then Len glanced up to meet his gaze, and the flash of blue eyes made Barry’s heart trip over itself in his chest.

Barry was struck all at once with the bone-deep truth that he wanted to kiss him. Wanted to lean over the table in the easy quiet that had settled over the room, pull the newspaper away, and press his lips to Len’s. It seemed like the easiest way to convey the tangle of emotions in his chest, the embarrassment-gratitude-trust chasing itself on a loop through his mind. But Len was quietly allowing him in his space, and it was something Barry doubted he offered to many people, so he tucked the feeling away and stayed on his side of the table.

It felt simple for a few moments, like an understanding that had been a long time coming. And then Barry realized he was sitting shirtless across the table from Captain Cold, wearing borrowed sweatpants and daydreaming about kissing him, and some part of his brain groaned. Because a crush on Leonard Snart was _exactly_ what he needed in his life right now. Fantastic.

“I should get going,” he said, as much to himself as to Len.

Len glanced at the clock on the wall above the doorway, then back down at his paper with a neutral expression.

It was an invitation to stay, Barry realized with a start. Unspoken, yes, but Len’s verdict— _It’s still early_ —was unmistakable. Barry wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. Was Len inviting him to stay at the table longer? To catch a couple more hours of sleep on the couch before he headed out? He looked at the clock, indecisive, then reprimanded himself. His friends needed him, and he couldn’t stay holed up in a Rogue safe house when they might not even know where he was. The trackers in the suit were probably shot to hell, and while Cisco could track the cold gun, Barry wasn’t certain Len had stowed it here.

So he pushed back from the table, ignoring the voice in his head that suggested sticking around to see if Len would make more pancakes.

“Thanks for”— _Everything_ hovered on the tip of his tongue for a moment, but he decided against it—“breakfast.”

Len held up a hand for him to wait. He finished whatever he was reading, then put the paper down.

“One other thing,” he said.

Len pushed back from the table, disappeared down the hall again, and came back with another bag. This one was made of a thicker, black plastic, and tied securely at the top. Curious, Barry pulled the knot open, and winced at the overpowering scent of blood coming from inside. A quick peek confirmed his suspicion: they were the rags from the night before, stiff with blood and more numerous than Barry had remembered. He probably owed Len a new set.

“Burn them,” Len said.

It wasn’t something Barry had thought of, to his faint chagrin. Len caught his moment of confusion, and tipped his mouth down in an annoyed line.

“Amount of money I’d get for even one of those, I could retire tomorrow,” Len said.

Barry couldn’t help the slow smile that began creeping across his face at that, and a muscle in Len’s jaw twitched.

“Let me get this straight,” Barry said. “Not only are you passing up on the chance to make my life even more difficult than usual, but you’re gonna give up a few million dollars too? You’re gonna have to explain how this one is in your best interest.”

Len raised an unimpressed eyebrow, but still didn’t meet his gaze.

“Someone starts cloning the Flash, how difficult it makes _your_ life is going to be the least of my worries,” Len said.  

“I don’t see the problem,” Barry said. “It’s not like you couldn’t stop them.”

Len flashed him a warning look, but Barry ignored it and gave him a knowing grin.

“You could’ve killed me a dozen times over,” he said. “Last night? You could’ve left, or just let that meta finish me off.” He glanced pointedly at the pans cluttering the stove, then cut Len a smirk. “First aid and breakfast are a new level of lousy villainy, Snart, even for you.”

“Someone had to protect Central,” Len said. “And since the Flash wasn’t going to do it...”  

Barry raised an eyebrow at that.

“And making me pancakes is your idea of protecting Central?” he asked. “Come on, admit it. You liked being the hero for once.”

Len gave him a cool look, then picked up the paper again. “Weren’t you leaving?” he asked.

Barry grinned at the obvious deflection.

“Whatever you say, Snart,” he said, slinging the plastic bags over his shoulder. “And hey—”

Len flipped down a corner of the paper to look at him, resigned, and Barry tossed him a wink.

“Thanks for the pants,” he said, and flashed away before Len could respond.

*          *          *

Caitlin and Cisco flew into a tizzy as soon as he blew into STAR Labs, asking him overlapping questions that Barry didn’t bother parsing, too pleased to see them to worry about much else. Cisco was evidently fine, as Len had promised, with only a neat row of Caitlin’s stitches over one cheekbone to suggest he’d even been hurt. Barry tried to drag him in for a hug anyway, but Cisco stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He gave him an incredulous once-over, gaze catching on the unfamiliar clothes.

“They let you go?” Cisco asked, and Barry’s smile dimmed in confusion.

“Who let me go?”

“Uh, Heatwave?” Caitlin said. “Golden Glider?”

Barry gave her a blank stare, and glanced at Cisco for clarification.

“They held up the Central Diamond Exchange an hour ago,” Cisco said. “Kept the police at bay by saying they had you as a hostage.”

“We saw the surveillance video from outside stock exchange last night,” Caitlin jumped in. “Cold dragged you out of there unconscious and threw you in a getaway car. Wally’s been trying to find a way in the back, but...”

They kept explaining, but Barry wasn’t listening anymore, disbelief and something dangerously close to laughter bubbling up in his chest. He wondered how quickly Len had had to work to throw together a job for Mick and Lisa once he’d found out about that surveillance footage.

“Do we have a spare suit?” he asked, interrupting Caitlin’s attempts to check his pupils with a pen light.

“Yeah, they’re on storage level B,” Cisco said, then narrowed his eyes. “Wait, why? What did you do to my suit?”

Barry spared a guilty look at the plastic bag he’d dropped by the door. Cisco followed his gaze, and his expression morphed into one of abject horror.

Barry gave him an apologetic grin and bolted, stopping just long enough to grab a spare suit before heading downtown to relieve Wally, unable to keep down the smile still tugging at his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Went ahead and upped the rating because chapter two is definitely going to be E. Barry's gotta return those sweatpants, after all. 
> 
> Comments are deeply, truly, passionately appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> I know I originally pitched this as a two-parter, but my inspiration skipped on to other projects so I'm just gonna let this stand alone for now. I might come back around and add a second chapter if the mood strikes, but I hope some of my other work can make it up to those of y'all who were hoping for one sooner rather than later!


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